tions and branches in Yorkshire, and with the development of a very extensive coal traffic.

The Eastern Counties, like the Midland, have been much injured by the rivalry of the Great Northern, in respect to the district formerly accommodated by the Cambridge line. The East Anglian railway, in the Ely and Lynn district, has come under the control of the Great Northern Company-not for its actual traffic-but to exclude the Eastern Counties. The Norfolk Company still maintain a working agreement with the Eastern Counties, but without any increase of mileage. The Eastern Union Company have recently opened a small branch. The Newmarket Railway has been opened to Cambridge, by a branch from Six-Mile Bottom. The Blackwall and the Camden Junction Railways are both doing well; the short traffic from Hampstead Road, Camden Town, Islington, Kingsland, Hackney, and Bow, to Fenchurch Street and to Blackwall, has become very extensive; and the Blackwall Company receive a portion of the benefit. The two terminal stations of the Camden line have been finished since the date of our last publication. The London and North Western Company have purchased some warehouses belonging to the East India Company near the Minories; and when short branches are made from the Blackwall railway to these warehouses and to the London Docks, it is intended to bring an extensive goods traffic upon the Camden Junction and the Blackwall lines-to give, in fact, to the great company a river-side terminus for their goods waggons. In Essex, nothing has been done to forward the Tilbury, the Southend, or the Thames Haven schemes; but the Harwich railway has been commenced. In the immediate vicinity of London, we need only mention that most of the great termini are undergoing repeated enlargements; and that an entirely new Great Western terminus, with an extensive hotel, are being built at Paddington.

In proceeding now to the northern half of England, we find that the Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway remains nearly in statu quo; and that the Ambergate and Buxton line has made very little progress during the year. The North Staffordshire was nearly completed before our last year's publication; but the peculiar position of the railway has given rise to certain traffic arrangements. The railway is almost wholly at the mercy of the London and North Western, with whose line it forms junctions at four points, and without the intervention of which it cannot transmit its passengers to London or to Birmingham, to Liverpool or to Manchester, to Yorkshire or to the North, to Chester or to the West. It comprises two chief portions, the Potteries and the Churnet Valley lines; the Potteries line is at the present moment the best route to Manchester; and the Churnet Valley line would form part of a dangerously rival route, if the Great Northern Company were (as has been proposed) to make a line from Hitchin to Leicester. To stave off rivalry for a time, and to work together in harmony, the North Staffordshire Company and its powerful neighbours are now acting upon a working agreement, whereby a portion of the net proceeds of the Manchester traffic is ensured to the former.

The Lancashire and Yorkshire and the East Lancashire Companies, whose lines interlace in a singular manner, have each opened a few additional portions; but the rivalry between them seems to foreshadow some kind of amalgamation. The Leeds and Thirsk (now Leeds Northern), the York and North Midland, and the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Companies, have done little more during the year than develop the traffic on the lines before opened. The same may be said of the Newcastle and Carlisle, the Lancaster and Carlisle, and the Maryport and Carlisle. In the Lake district, the Furness railway has been very nearly completed; so that there is now a coast line between the mountains and the sea through the whole of Westmoreland and Cumberland; and when the Carnforth and Ulverstone branch is constructed, the Lake district will be completely encircled by an unbroken line of railway.

way.

In Scotland, the three great lines of communication from the south -the North British, the Caledonian, and the Glasgow and South Western (formerly the Glasgow and Ayr)—have added very little to the length of line opened during the last twelve months. The Caledonian Company have been occupied in shaking off or modifying the reckless guarantees which so pressed upon them: a process which bears somewhat the aspect of repudiation. The Dumbartonshire railway still remains truncated at Bowling, instead of being continued eastward to Glasgow. The Edinburgh and Glasgow have made a few junctions, but no extensive line of new railNorth of the Forth and the Clyde, the Scottish Central and the Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee Companies, after a struggle for the Perth traffic, have agreed to divide it between them-a kind of result witnessed in many other quarters. A route is now completed along the north side of the Forth; from Burntisland to Dunfermline by the Edinburgh and Perth Company; from thence to Alloa by the Stirling and Dunfermline; and thence to a point near Stirling by the Scottish Central. All the railways north and east of Perth remain nearly the same in length as twelve months ago. If we draw a straight line from Greenock to Aberdeen, the country north-west of this line, comprising much more than one half of Scotland, does not contain a single mile of railway.

In Ireland, the Irish Great Western line has been extended from Mullingar to Galway-an event which seems likely to aid in developing the resources of the west of Ireland. The Irish South Eastern has been extended from Bagnalstown to Kilkenny. Waterford and Kilkenny line has been opened from Kilkenny to Jerpoint Hill. The Belfast and County Down railway has been opened to Newtownards.

PROGRESS OF RAILWAY TRAFFIC.

The

We shall now rapidly glance at a few points connected with the capital, the traffic, the receipts, the expenditure, the shares, &c., on the railways taken collectively.

The total authorised capital sanctioned by Parliament for the various railways in the United Kingdom, down to the session of

1851, is about 355,000,000l. This excludes abandoned schemes, and is made up of those which still retain their parliamentary

powers.

The much-dreaded "calls" on railway shares lessened rapidly after the panic in the share market, as will be seen by the following sums:

Throughout this period of four years the average was somewhat over half a million sterling per week. The calls in 1851 have been lower than in 1850.

In respect to the prices of shares, Messrs. Railton have adopted a convenient mode of comparison. They select the 23 principal railways, with a paid-up capital of 96,000,0007.; they calculate how much one share in each concern (23 shares in all) would cost on a particular day; and they compare this with the market price on any other day. On April 26, 1850, those shares were worth 7337.; and on the same day in 1851, 1,1107.; on July 26, 1850, they were at 7571.; and on the same day in 1851, 9687. The highest value, March 19, 1851, was 1,1327. There was a gradual and pretty steady rise till this last date, and a gradual but not so extensive a fall till the middle of September.

The total traffic for 1850 may be best estimated by placing it in. juxtaposition with that for previous years. The following sums

relate to the whole of the railways of the United Kingdom:

Total. Weekly average per mile.

Year.

1842

£4,341,781

£60

The average traffic per mile per week shows a steady increase while the great trunk lines were being developed; but when minor branches and competing lines began to be formed, the average was visibly affected. These averages (given in the third column above) are further influenced by the fact, that many of the recently constructed lines pass through difficult districts, and that many of the new and enlarged stations have been enormously expensive; so that the entire recent outlay, spread equally over the mileage, presents seriously high figures. It has been computed that the railways existing in 1842 had cost on an average about 34,7007. per mile; that in 1846 this average was lessened to 31,8007.; but that by the end of 1850 it had risen to 35,2007. We shall therefore be near the truth in assuming, perhaps for two or three years to come,

that the railways of the United Kingdom have cost 35,000l. per mile-an amount startling in its magnitude, and affording good reasons, independent of other causes, for the smallness of the prevailing dividends. The accounts for 1851 are not yet made up; they will possibly show a less expense for new works, estimated by mileage, than 1850; but they cannot perceptibly affect the average. The "battle of the gauges" will render 1852 an expensive year in the Birmingham district.

The "return ticket" system is likely to have a beneficial influence in Ireland, by bringing that country into more intimate daily communication with England than at any former period. When the completion of the tubular bridge placed Holyhead in uninterrupted railway connexion with London, it was of course the interest of the Company to develop as much as possible a traffic between England and Ireland, the major part of which would pass along the Chester and Holyhead Railway. In furtherance of this plan, a system of return-tickets and of through-booking was agreed upon between the various Companies; from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Chester, on the one hand, to Dublin on the other. This was commenced on August 1, 1851; and in the following month a great extension of the plan was made, by adding Warrington, Leeds, Huddersfield, and Bangor, to the English and Welsh list, and Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Galway, Ballinasloe, Athlone, Mullingar, Belfast, Newry, and Dundalk, to the Irish list. Passengers are booked from any one of the above English and Welsh towns, to any one of the Irish towns, including the steam passage from Holyhead to Kingstown. The returntickets are available not merely for two or three days, but for a fortnight, and the reduction of fare is greater than on most of the English lines. Seven railway Companies take part in this arrangement. During 1852, or early in 1853, railways will be finished and opened from Mallow to the Lakes of Killarney; from Dublin through Bray to Wicklow; and from Dublin over the Boyne to Belfast; and the whole of these districts will gradually be brought under the influence of the through-booking and return-ticket system.

The Scotch railways have likewise an extensive system of through-booking and return-tickets, in conjunction with the Euston Square authorities. A passenger from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow may now, instead of those towns, select Stirling, Perth, Dundee, or Aberdeen-paying the same fare in any case, and the Companies dividing pro ratâ among them. This curious system has been adopted to enable the railways to compete with the Scotch steam-ships.

It is interesting to observe the increase of third class travelling, relatively to first and second class. Let us compare 1845 (the year before enclosed carriages for "penny_trains" were rendered compulsory by Parliament) with 1580. In every hundred passengers the ratios were as follow:

Here it is seen that the first class ratio lowered nearly as 3 to 2, the second class about as 7 to 6, while the third rose as 10 to 13. In 1845 the second class exceeded the third; whereas in 1850 the third class exceeded first and second conjointly.

As the third class traffic has increased upon the first and second, so of course have the money receipts; but not in exactly the same ratio, on account of the sensible lowering of first and second class fares on many lines. For every £100 taken, the following were the ratios:--

Here the third class, from being exactly half the first, became exactly equal to it. There are two remarkable features about the above two tables-that throughout the period of six years the second-class passengers never varied far from 40 per cent. of the whole number; and that the second-class receipts varied still less from 40 per cent. of the whole receipts. This was even observable also in the years 1842-3-4. It is also worthy of note, that the average payment for all the trips, by all the classes and on all the railways, has (during the above six years) never varied far from 2s. In 1845 it was 2s. 4d.; in 1846, 2s. 1d.; in 1847, 2s.; in 1848, 2s.; in 1849, 2s.; in 1850, 1s. 11d. It is likewise found, year after year, that the average length of every trip is within a trifle, on either side, of seventeen miles. The exceptional year 1851, with its Crystal Palace attractions, will disturb all ordinary calculations; but even here it becomes observable, that, although fares were never before so cheap per mile, the middle and working classes never before made such long average journeys; so that it may yet appear, when the year's railway accounts are made up, that the standard, 2s. per trip, has not been far departed from.

While the third-class traffic has increased relatively to the other two classes, so has the goods traffic relatively to the passenger traffic as a whole. In every 100% of gross receipts (passengers and goods) the ratios, in two distant years, were as fol

low:

Combining the last two tables together, the gross receipts exhibit

the following ratios per 1001.:

One among the singular features presented by railway trafficnot intended or calculated by the companies-is this, that the average charge for conveying one ton of average goods one mile is almost precisely the same as that paid by average passengers. The former was rather the higher of the two a few years ago; but they now exhibit a singularly near approach to equality.